Oh dear god.
Aug. 22nd, 2012 05:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulySo, there's this four year old kid named Hunter. Hunter is deaf. He signs. His preschool has a, um, robust weapons policy. The kid's very own name-sign is, apparently, in violation of this policy. Because if you sign "Hunter" it looks kinda like you're making a finger gun, and you can't bring guns to school.
Is your head hurting as much as mine, because mine's sure hurting.
Is your head hurting as much as mine, because mine's sure hurting.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 02:55 pm (UTC)And with unusual names, I think most people tend to titter the first half-a-dozen times and then go on with business as usual and accept it as that person’s name, not reading much more into it.
Zero tolerance policies so often end up being zero intelligence policies. (And zero wiggle-room policies for intelligent people who end up having to enforce them.)
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 10:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 03:23 pm (UTC)…or was that your point?
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 02:20 pm (UTC)I'd facepalm at anyone suspending a kid from school just for making a finger gun, let along a deaf kid signing his own name. *FACEPALM COMMENCES HERE*
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 03:27 pm (UTC)It's a terroristic threat that can cause your teacher to fear for her life. (http://www.kvue.com/news/state/Texas-student-suspended-for-finger-gun-91514929.html)
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 04:38 pm (UTC)I... can't really think of anything to say about that.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 06:38 pm (UTC)It's okay. We understand. Sometimes, there just IS nothing to say.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-29 02:47 am (UTC)LOL, I did have to have a strict weapons policy in one of my preschool classrooms. That was in 1984; one of the Star Wars movies had just come out, and I had this absolutely brilliant, charming little guy in my class: - "Don't call me Nickie any more; I changed my name to Luke Skywalker!!" - who could build a lightsaber out of ANY manipulative toy, no kidding! Of course he taught all the other little guys to build them too, and I was having a very hard time enforcing my strict No Lightsabers policy. But these were four-year-olds, right? Anyone who has to suspend a preschooler for making a toy gun or sword has no business calling themselves a teacher.
With my daughter, , her father and I put real weapons into her hands as soon as she was big enough to stand and hold them . She did have knives and a bow in preschool, and a whole arsenal of interesting weapons by middle school, but they weren't 'toys' and she didn't misuse them. She's too petite to be a contender with the sword, but she's a damn good shot with bow or throwing knife, and competent enough with firearms to use them safely. It's children who have been forbidden weapons rather than taught to use them properly, who are likely to endanger themselves or others.
That's neither here nor there, because the kids in these cases don't even HAVE any weapons; they're just pointing their fingers. I have a lot less sympathy for the teenager who got suspended, because she's old enough to know that pretending to shoot at someone is taken as a threat, as much as saying "I'd like to shoot you" would be. Enough teachers have been shot by students that even 'jokingly' implied threats are taken deadly seriously.
That's not the case with little Hunter; he's just trying to tell people his name. Poor guy, he's probably going to be given a hard time about it all the way through school - maybe he would actually be better off calling himself Luke Skywalker or something instead.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-29 09:48 am (UTC)Oh gods, yes. I remember our glorious "Robin Hood" theme in judo camp. Lots of kids apparently had never used a bow and arrows, not even shoddy self-made ones, in their lives. You'd think that normally, behind the archer is a safe place to stand. Yeah, not with those kids.
Same, of course, with fire. It's generally not the kids who know how to light candles and campfires because they've done it with their parents who accidentally set forests on fire: It's those who aren't allowed near matches at home, and thus kindle stuff in secret. *sigh*
I wonder how you sign Luke Skywalker! I hope it doesn't involve mimicking a lightsaber. I suspect blades are only marginally better than finger guns...
no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-28 05:09 pm (UTC)This is clearly, as stated above by others, nothing more than the training up of a new batch of hoplophobes. Consequently, the kid's very name is now an Unword, so he will be taught to be ashamed of it.
I'll add that I know two people named Gunner and Gunnar, and one wonders what THEIR names would cause in the way of trouble and strife at said schools.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-29 04:50 am (UTC)IMHO, it's important for children to be taught how to properly handle things that are likely to hurt them. That includes fire, water, electricity, heights, rough terrain, inclement weather, germs, animals, hazardous substances, vehicles, tools and weapons. One can't just let them learn by trial-and-error, because the errors could be serious. On the other hand, one can't keep them in a child-proof box and tell them the world outside is Forbidden For Their Protection.
I will never have firearms in my house, nor use them, beyond sometimes plinking cans off a fence with a .22 in my youth. I'm the kind of person who ought not to have them, and I wish everybody who ought not to have them would recognize that about themselves. That's not going to happen, though, alas.
Many years ago, I knew a Gunnar Gunnarson. Good thing he wasn't Deaf and going to school in these times!
no subject
Date: 2012-08-29 01:17 am (UTC)Preposterous! They can't claim it's a violation of their weapons policy for a child to say his own name. Heh, unless his name was Hastur, maybe.
(Oh noes, are we now all going to die horribly because I typed it? Does Signing Exact English have specific names for the Elder Gods? That would come in handy if the Horror one was invoking was, in fact, unspeakable. I bet the sign for 'Cthulhu' is impossible to watch without either laughing hysterically or going raving mad.
Anyway, go Hunter, go Hunter's parents, go Hunter's parents' attorneys, and may Hunter's idiot school administrators learn the definition of the word 'weapon', because it does not mean what they apparently think it means.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-29 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-29 03:44 am (UTC)From what it says in the articles, it appears that the sign he's using for his name is an initialized sign for the word "hunter", which is a registered word in Signing Exact English. Initialized signs are a standard feature of SEE, especially for names - my own name-sign is J + 'yes' = Jess; my friend Wing makes a W while flapping her elbow like a wing.
Not everyone who signs is Deaf. There are a lot of folk whose hearing is fine, but whose central auditory processing doesn't cope well with spoken language. For such folk, SEE is more useful than ASL, because it's a literal translation. Listening to English while watching ASL is like watching a movie where the subtitles don't quite match the spoken dialogue- not so bad if one already knows English, but it's got to make learning it more difficult.
I think SEE ought to be taught right along with reading and writing to all children, whatever their hearing or processing is like. It's just useful for so many things - phonics, grammar, talking privately, or across a room - not to mention how handy it would be for the Deaf community if everybody understood manually coded language from early childhood on.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-29 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-29 01:49 am (UTC)Word of the day
Date: 2012-08-29 06:07 pm (UTC)